(Phys.org) —Plasmonic nanoparticles developed at Rice University are becoming known for their ability to turn light into heat, but how to use them to generate electricity is not nearly as well understood.

Sandia National Laboratories is developing computer models that show how radioactive waste interacts with soil and sediments, shedding light on waste disposal and how to keep contamination away from drinking ...

In times where cracking down on energy consumption, cutting emissions and saving resources are central environmental concerns – enhanced lubricants, with the potential to increase operating efficiency in ...

Ever since the Bronze Age, metals have been cast in different shapes for different applications. Smooth surfaces that are resistant to corrosion are crucial for many of the present-day uses of cast metals, ...

Steam condensation is key to the worldwide production of electricity and clean water: It is part of the power cycle that drives 85 percent of all electricity-generating plants and about half of all desalination ...

Fuel cells that convert hydrogen into power and only produce pure water as a by-product have the potential to lead individual mobility into an environmentally friendly future. The Paul Scherrer Institute ...

Tessellation patterns that have fascinated mathematicians since Johannes Kepler worked out their systematics 400 years ago – and that more recently have caught the eye of both artists and crystallographers ...

Researchers at the University of Southampton, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Cambridge, have developed a technique to help treat fatal diseases more effectively. Dr Sumeet Mahajan and ...

'Liquid marbles' are a peculiar new substance made by rolling water droplets into powders incapable of dissolving in water. The resulting micro- and nanoscale-particles act like soft solids, and can speed ...

In 1998, the Nobel Prize in Physics was conferred to the discovery of a new type of quantum fluid with fractional charge excitations, known as Laughlin state. The production of this quantum state, which explains the behaviour ...

A new way of detecting and visualizing fingerprints from crime scenes using colour-changing fluorescent films could lead to higher confidence identifications from latent (hidden) fingerprints on knives, guns, ...

A new self-adhesive tape simplifies the process of pickling aluminum surfaces. It is safer than existing treatment methods involving pickling pastes, sprays or baths, because there is no rinsing stage and ...